Web Accessibility Statement & Guide

At BBI Brandboost, we believe the digital world should be open, inclusive, and usable for everyone. Web accessibility isn’t a checkbox or a legal afterthought—it is a core pillar of how we design, build, and maintain our digital presence.

This page outlines the steps we have taken to improve our website, the testing methodologies we employ, and why digital inclusion matters to our business and our community.

Web Accessibility

Web accessibility (often abbreviated as a11y) ensures that people of all abilities can navigate, understand, and interact with the web.

Digital barriers can completely isolate individuals from essential services, information, and employment.

When we design for accessibility, we aren’t just helping a small minority; we are creating a better experience for absolutely everyone. Accessibility features benefit:

• Individuals with permanent disabilities: Including visual, auditory, motor, cognitive, or speech impairments.

• Individuals with temporary injuries: Such as someone navigating with a broken dominant hand or recovering from eye surgery.

• Individuals experiencing situational limitations: Such as a user viewing a screen in bright sunlight, or someone in a quiet public space watching a video without headphones.

• The aging population: As users age, they frequently experience changing vision, motor control, and hearing capabilities.

Our current optimisation efforts target alignment with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, focusing heavily on Level AA conformance, which is the recognised global benchmark for commercial and public-sector websites.

The Bare Essentials: Core Areas We Have Upgraded

We have systematically audited and updated our codebase and design framework to address the most critical barriers to digital access. Here is a breakdown of what we have done across the fundamental pillars of web accessibility:

1. Keyboard Navigation & Interaction

Many users cannot use a traditional mouse due to motor control limitations, tremors, or paralysis. They rely entirely on keyboards, switches, or assistive tech to navigate.

• Our Upgrades: We have ensured that every interactive element on our site—links, buttons, form fields, and dropdown menus—is fully reachable and operable using standard keyboard commands (such as the Tab and Enter keys).

• Logical Focus Order: The navigation flow follows a predictable, logical reading pattern (top-to-bottom, left-to-right).

2. Visible Focus Indicators

A visible focus indicator (often seen as an outline around a button or link) acts as the “mouse cursor” for keyboard users, showing them exactly where they are on the page.

• Our Upgrades: We have completely eliminated “hidden focus styles.” Every interactive element features a highly visible, high-contrast focus ring when focused, meeting strict visibility criteria so users never lose track of their position.

3. Screen Reader Compatibility & Semantics

Screen readers are assistive software programs that read aloud the text and underlying code of a webpage for blind or visually impaired users.

• Our Upgrades: We have refactored our layout using native, semantic HTML5 elements (like <header>, <nav>, <main>, and <footer>. This provides an underlying blueprint that allows screen readers to understand the structure of our content instantly.

• Heading Hierarchy: We have corrected our heading levels H1 through to H6 so they function as an accurate structural outline of the page, rather than using them strictly for visual styling.

4. Alternative Text (Alt Tags) for Imagery

Images convey vital information, context, and branding, which must be translated into text for users who cannot see them.

• Our Upgrades: All meaningful images on our site now include descriptive alt attributes embedded in the code. For purely decorative elements, we have explicitly applied empty alt tags (alt="") or hidden them entirely from assistive technology using aria-hidden="true", preventing screen readers from cluttering the user experience with irrelevant file names.

5. Color Contrast & Visual Design

Low contrast makes text completely unreadable for individuals with low vision, color blindness, or even anyone looking at a phone screen under direct sunlight.

• Our Upgrades: We have audited our entire corporate color palette. All body text and functional interface elements maintain a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1 against their background. For larger text and headings, we maintain a minimum ratio of 3:1, fully adhering to WCAG standards.

• Beyond Color: We no longer rely on color alone to convey critical information (such as error messages or active links). All links are clearly distinguished by underlines or distinct shapes, and form errors use explicit text descriptions alongside visual changes.

6. Accessible Forms & Data Input

Forms are where user interaction happens—whether signing up, getting in touch, or checking out. They are historically a massive friction point for accessibility.

• Our Upgrades: Every form field on our website is programmatically linked to a clear, persistent visual text label using the for and id attributes. We have eliminated floating labels that disappear when a user types, and ensured that error messages are descriptive, clear, and explicitly announced by screen readers using live regions.

How We Test Our Website

Accessibility is a continuous process, not a one-time project. To catch errors and maintain compliance, we utilize a multi-layered testing workflow:

Testing Method	What It Involves	Why We Do It
Automated Scanning	Running programmatic tools across our codebase to flag instantaneous errors.	Catches low-hanging fruit like missing alt tags, improper heading structures, or obvious color contrast failures instantly.
Manual Keyboard Audits	Unplugging the mouse and navigating the entire site using only the Tab, Shift+Tab, Spacebar, and Arrow keys.	Verifies that interactive elements don’t create “keyboard traps” and ensures the visible focus rings are working perfectly in real-world scenarios.
Screen Reader Walkthroughs	Testing critical user paths (like contact forms and navigation menus) using popular screen reading software (such as NVDA or VoiceOver).	Ensures the verbal announcements make logical sense and that dynamic elements (like mobile menus) behave predictably when heard rather than seen.

Our Ongoing Commitment

While we have completed roughly 80% of our core accessibility overhaul, we recognise that digital optimization is an evolving journey. There are still complex templates, legacy content, and minor edge cases we are actively resolving in our ongoing development sprints.

If you encounter any barriers, have difficulty accessing specific content, or notice an area we can improve, please reach out to us. We actively welcome your feedback.

• Email: info@bbi.co.uk

• Phone: 01494 452 600

• Response Time: We aim to respond to all accessibility inquiries within 2 business days and will gladly provide alternative formats of any information you require.